News

The recent release of the IPCC report is alarming. We have about 12 years to get our act together or face catastrophic change to the planet. The challenge facing all societies is great, and it now demands incredible political will. We led our last peer-to-peer learning exchange at Royal Roads on October 18th, meeting with community leaders to discuss our key MC³ policy outcomes.

We just led a virtual conversation on the co-benefits of acting on climate change. The e-audience included a mayor, a municipal councilor and a researcher from Scotland in addition to researchers and practitioners from across the country. While we didn’t get into the results of Brexit, many ideas about the co-benefits of acting on climate change emerged.

In July, the BC Government released a paper designed to stimulate discussion around the Province’s developing Climate Leadership Plan. The discussion paper outlines goals and areas of action that the Province is currently focusing on, and then invites stakeholders and the greater public to provide feedback on these focus areas.

A new video is being shared through the CRC HEADTalks YouTube channel.

Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3): The role of the Internet in climate change research dissemination and knowledge mobilization, an article on the knowledge mobilization activities of the first phase of the project, has recently been published through Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture.

Energy is the fundamental driving force of all life and community infrastructure; it influences the ways we work, play and live and our future options for human well-being. The manner in which we develop and operate our energy systems is a critical first step in achieving sustainable communities and lifestyles. We therefore must ask – what has Canada relied on for energy and how will we continue to power this country?

Exploring Pathways: Deep Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions by 2050 in BC Communities was prepared through the MC³ project the behalf of BC Hydro. This report explores future energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trajectories that achieve deep GHG emissions reductions and makes recommendations for policies that are required to achieve reduction targets.

An interesting opportunity has been posted on GoodWork.ca for someone with an aptitude and/or interest in both the theatrical arts and environmental issues. A script for an award-winning play (Best in Fest at the 2013 Ottawa Fringe Festival) that takes a comedic, satirical view on climate change has been made available under a creative commons license for anyone who wishes to download it and use it for a local production.

We have just released a raindrop plot, a deeper exploration of the research outcomes from our climate adaptation and mitigation research, MC³ case study data. This visualization highlights key concepts that were developed through discussions among the MC³ interdisciplinary team, using the case study protocol and research outcomes to guide our analysis.

We have just released a series of eleven word clouds through the MC³ site, one word cloud for each of the BC case communities. These visualizations were developed using interview data collected through the MC³ research, and thus use a richer set of text that the streamlined published case studies. Each word cloud shows the key concepts that emerged through the data for a respective community, and displays these concepts by their relative strength (i.e., size).